Sustainable Development

By Shaden Khalil

What is sustainable development?
People achieve social and economic development through their continuous consumption of the country’s abundant resources that nature can’t substitute on the long-run. Luckily, the industries' owners realized the importance of saving energy and efficiency of their respective supply-chains whereas countries began acknowledging the value of their natural resources.
Nowadays, the leading global framework for international cooperation is based on sustainability. There are 17 goals targeted worldwide in the fields of economy, environment, and society for both developed nations and developing countries called sustainable development goals to be executed by 2030. Each of the governments, civil society, businesses and people should participate in reaching the demanded goals. The countries' performance in achieving the goals will be measured even.
Main objectives of sustainable development
- Developing while decreasing the exploitation of natural resources
- Creating maintainable and sustainable development without excessively harming the environment
- Equipping the existing development companies with environmentally friendly facilities and projects.
It is important to provide the three main interrelated elements of economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental protection in homogeneous way to carry-out sustainable development.
Why is sustainable development important?
- Basic needs: As the population rate accelerates, governments should consider that people must choose sustainable and renewable energy for their basic needs of food, shelter, and water rather than non-renewable ones.
- Need for agriculture: There should be a scope on the sustainable agriculture methods that satisfy the massive population through effective seeding techniques and crop rotation that reinforce the soil integration. The rate of poverty has decreased in 20 years to score 700 million in 2010. This means that the consumption of food has increased; there will be more industrialization and more focus on agriculture. Also, the middle class is expected to increase globally to score 3.2 billion by 2020 and 4.9 billion by 2030.
- Reduce using non-renewable resources: This will help in controlling the climate change and exerting of greenhouse gases.
- Financial stability: The countries that don’t have fossil fuels can use sustainable energy and technologies to improve their economy. Also, the industry stakeholders should be aware of the changing population’s composition which made them shift to sustainable development and sustainable economic development.
- Preserving biodiversity: Some species are endangered because of overconsumption practices that emit greenhouse gases.
How can sustainable development occur?
The cultural vision of each country should be changed to make sustainable development a norm, so the culture would rather lead to a global benefit over a local one and the resources should be developed for the value of the future as a kind of responsibility for the coming generations.
Why can’t it happen?
First, the methods and materials to maintain sustainability are expensive, especially in their first phase. Second, people don’t accept the necessity of sustainable development.
Limitations of sustainable development
- There are growth methods that don’t consider sustainability, so countries and organization should put this against their social and environmental consideration.
- The young generation is careful about preserving the planet while they are less likely to consume in comparison with the generations that preceded them. Thus, the economic growth in developed countries is slow.
- The humans’ psychology and environmental attitude of people should be considered simultaneously with the given choices of economic growth which should be the way to the end result, not the end.
- However innovation ensures sustainability in organizations and community, sometimes it leads to overconsumption of the new improved products and overtakes natural resources.